


Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski

by Q_loves_you



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1761663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Q_loves_you/pseuds/Q_loves_you
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically a look at Stiles and Lydia's lives pre-series and during the series, how their lives intertwine and such. My interpretation of what Stydia is based on canon and headcanon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski

**Author's Note:**

> I ship Stydia so much, but here is me acknowledging that yes, it has its issues. I just believe they can work past them. And that's what I'm trying to show.

Lydia Martin was a genius. A beautiful genius at that. And because she was a genius, she learned very early on what she had to do and be in order to succeed. She had to dominate. And people, especially women, had to be perfect and not know-it-alls in order to rule a school.  
So that was what Lydia Martin became. Perfect. Beautiful, assertive, smart enough for the future, but not overtly intelligent, unbreakable, haughty, cold.

Stiles Stilinski was a smart, energetic, distractible, troublesome child. He had tried being polite, quiet, conventional, cool, anything other than Stiles. But it hadn’t worked, and he didn’t like it, so he just Stiles-ed as hard as he could, and he loved it.  
Except he knew that he was troublesome. He knew that he caused his parents difficulty and that his teachers dreaded his arrival. But he couldn’t help it. There was so much to be done and seen and learned, and if they weren’t talking about something he cared about, he couldn’t pretend he did.

When Lydia’s parents split, Lydia was split too. Her father told her to choose a parent, and she chose her mother because at least her mother loved her enough not to make her do that. And of course she didn’t break really, because she was Lydia Martin, queen of Beacon Hills High School. Breaking was for nights spent alone in her room.

When Stiles’ mother stopped making sense and he watched her fade away and his father stopped talking and started drinking, Stiles stopped Stiles-ing for a while. Because Stiles-ing required a mother. He stopped being Stiles and started sleep-walking and having nightmares and panic attacks. Then his father stopped drinking and started trying to fix his boy, and it started working and when Stiles was Stiles again, he found Scott who was so perfect. His brother. And Stiles was still so very broken, but he had Scott and his father and he was okay as long as they were there.

When Lydia and Stiles first met, Stiles’ mother was in the hospital, and Lydia’s parents were arguing, and Stiles’ dad had to deal with some emergency, so he and Lydia were the only ones waiting after school to be picked up. Stiles had seen the pretty orange-haired girl before during recess, but he had never ever been this close to her. She wasn’t just pretty. She was beautiful, probably the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, apart from his mom, and his mom wasn’t a girl. She was a woman. Stiles could tell by the way the girl sat and the expression on her face that one day she would rule the world, and he would love to live in a world she ruled.  
“Hi. I’m Stiles,” he said, probably too loudly. Everyone, especially at the hospital, was always telling him he was too loud. The girl raised her eyebrows at him.  
“I’m Lydia. You have a weird name.”  
Stiles shrugged. “My real name is weirder. I like Stiles.”  
Lydia didn’t respond. She returned to watching the road for her parents. This was unacceptable. Her parents were not supposed to need reminding to come get her, and random, weird boys were not supposed to start talking to her.  
Stiles watched the girl – Lydia – as she watched the road. “Do you like Batman?” he blurted out.  
Lydia rolled her eyes. “That stuff’s for children.”  
“You are a child.”  
“I’m eight years old. That’s barely a child. Plus, I’m more mature than you are. So no.”  
Stiles stared. “How can you not like Batman?”  
But Lydia had stopped paying attention as her mother drove up. She stalked away without looking back at Stiles’ indignant, “But he’s Batman!”  
Stiles watched Lydia leave with her mother, and thought, I’m going to marry that girl.

That evening when Stiles visited his mother in the hospital, he told her all about Lydia, and how pretty she was. How her hair was so shiny and her eyes were green and wasn’t Lydia the prettiest name ever? His mother smiled vaguely as he prattled away, and he resolved to always tell her about Lydia from now on.

That evening at dinner, Lydia’s parents tried very hard to be civil with each other. Lydia could tell that they were angry, of course. They always were, after all. Her mother asked her if the boy she had been talking to was her friend. Lydia wrinkled her nose.  
“No. I don’t know who he was. And he kept staring.”  
Her mother smiled. “Well, you’re a beautiful girl, Lydia. Maybe he likes you.”  
Lydia scoffed. “He just met me. He doesn’t even know my last name.”

Lydia Martin. He rolled the name around in his head. It was perfect. Stiles’ father was poised to become the sheriff of Beacon Hills, and Stiles was an overly inquisitive boy. He had snuck into Lydia’s classroom while everyone was at recess and read her nametag. The name suited her somehow. It was a name people would remember.

Lydia heard people talking about him, the boy whose mother had just died. Everyone in her homeroom had to sign a card to give to him. She felt sorry for him, so she used her favorite blue pen. Blue was statistically the most likely to be his favorite color.

Stiles didn’t return to school for several weeks after his mother died. They had wanted him to return earlier to get a routine back into his life and so that he could still socialize with other children, but he kept having panic attacks, so they let him stay home. He didn’t want to go back to school. The people there hadn’t known how to handle him before. They certainly weren’t going to be able to now. He and his dad got lots of cards and flowers, and the whole third grade class signed a card for him. For the first time in days, he felt interest in something other than his mother, his father’s health, or food. He searched the card for Lydia’s signature, and there it was in sparkly blue. Blue was his favorite color. He wondered if she had done that on purpose.

Lydia asked her parents about the boy and his family that night at dinner. They said the family was called Stilinski, and the father was probably going to become sheriff soon. The son was reportedly a nice enough boy, but he had ADHD and nobody seemed able to control him except the mother. The mother had been a beautiful, kind woman named Claudia. Lydia didn’t ask if her parents had actually known her. They hadn’t. People always spoke well of the dead, whether they knew them or not.

When Stiles did return to school, people treated him differently, which resulted in three more panic attacks. But they did return to normal eventually, once everyone had time to forget and move on. Everyone but Stiles of course. Then he met Scott, the puppy-like ball of sunshine and rainbows. Scott refused to leave him alone in his misery, and Stiles hated and loved him for it. Neither of them had anyone else though, so Stiles decided that it was okay if Scott hung out with him because it was for Scott’s benefit as much as his own. Scott was nerdy and had asthma, and Stiles was awkward and had ADHD and panic attacks. It was a perfect fit.  
When Stiles told Scott that he was in love with Lydia Martin, Scott laughed at first. Then he saw how serious Stiles was about it and resolved to help him woo her. Once they were older of course. Scott’s mom said that young love didn’t last well. Stiles thought she might be saying that because she and Scott’s dad didn’t get along anymore, but he wasn’t going to tell Scott that, because Scott didn’t need that kind of negativity. That was also why Stiles didn’t bring up the phone conversation he overheard the night Scott’s dad left. It was why he never talked about his mom except on nights when the pressure had built up so much that he felt he was going to burst with pain. But he learned to control it so that he had fewer and fewer of those nights, especially later when Scott had major, life-threatening werewolf problems to deal with.

Lydia took exactly one day off from school when her parents got divorced. She refused to miss any more than was absolutely necessary, and she needed a distraction from the jagged tear that had suddenly split her life. That distraction was Jackson. She knew Jackson was an ass, of course. She knew how he strutted around as if he owned the place and bullied anyone not cool enough to be part of his crowd. She knew exactly what he was. He was a scared little boy who just wanted to impress someone. And he was impressive. He was impressively sexy for a sixteen year old, and he was great at lacrosse. He remembered important things like birthdays and anniversaries. They were nearing their one year anniversary when Lydia’s father moved out. He made sure it was special.

The word around the school was that Lydia Martin’s parents were getting a divorce. Stiles couldn’t get close enough to Lydia to talk to her about it, but he slipped a chocolate bar into her bag while she wasn’t looking and hoped she would take it as a sign of someone looking after her well-being. He realized seconds after it had been done that she would probably take it as a sign of creepy people trying to drug her, but it was too late, and he could only hope. He noticed that she spent a lot of time with Jackson. He was her boyfriend (Of course Jackson Whittemore would be Lydia Martin’s boyfriend. Fucking Jackson with his stupid perfect face and his Porsche. Asshole.) so it made sense that she would be with him a lot, but Stiles hadn’t noticed any change in their interactions after her parents were divorced other than an upswing in PDA. He supposed she was continuing to put on her cool, collected façade even now. She seemed more tired than usual, but he had grown up studying the various mannerisms of Lydia Martin, so he doubted anyone else would notice. Maybe she and Jackson did actually talk when no one else was around, maybe not. It wasn’t his business what they did. But he hoped Jackson was some comfort to her at least.

Lydia found a chocolate bar in her bag after biology. She knew it hadn’t been there before, and she didn’t know how it had gotten there. Messy, almost indecipherable writing on the wrapper said “I hope you feel better.” She looked at it suspiciously. It was quite possibly drugged or something, and she should probably throw it away. Then again, who in Beacon Hills High School was stupid enough to drug Lydia of all people? She opened it carefully, sniffed it, and nibbled a corner. It seemed fine, and chocolate was definitely something she could use at the moment. Maybe someone really was just looking out for her. Maybe it had been Jackson. Or Danny. Or someone paid off by Jackson. She broke off a piece and popped it in her mouth with half a genuine smile.

Stiles would never forgive himself for looking for that dead body. And especially not for dragging Scott along. His friend was cursed, and Stiles was the one responsible. Sure, if he told Scott he felt like that, Scott would never blame him, would put everything on the one that bit him. But Stiles knew better. He had known better than to go looking for half a dead body in the woods in the middle of the night. What kind of an idiot did that? Stiles, apparently. And now Scott had to pay the price.

Lydia met Allison in the winter of her sophomore year of high school. At first, she thought that Allison as a beautiful new girl could increase Lydia’s own status. She didn’t have anything against Allison, certainly. She seemed nice enough. But becoming emotionally attached was not something she had counted on. It had happened though, and Lydia’s life turned upside down.  
She had friends. Of course, she had always had friends. Casual friends who were acceptable for hanging out on weekends or maybe studying with once in a while, people she would partner up with on projects or sit with at lunch, Danny. But now she had Allison, and because of Allison she had Scott, and Stiles was around a lot too, though she wasn’t sure if she would describe him as a friend. He was simply a necessity for having Scott around, so she put up with him. Then they were trapped in the school with a murderer for a night, and wow was that ever an eye-opening experience. Something was clearly going on with Scott and Stiles. Scott was in something way over his head, and Stiles was apparently dragged along and trying to keep Scott from getting killed. It didn’t make any sense, but she knew they weren’t trying to hurt anyone.

When Scott was bitten, Stiles never even considered leaving him. When Scott tried to kill him, when Derek bled all over his jeep, when the alpha chased them around the school, not once did he consider that maybe he should have let Scott deal with it on his own. Later, he realized that any sane person would probably at least have thought about it. But not him. Not when it was Scott. Stiles wasn’t a generally kind and selfless person like Scott. He was actually pretty selfish, and he knew it. But there were three (an argument could be made for four) people for whom he would do absolutely anything, and he would let the whole world burn if it meant keeping those three safe. If his father, Scott, and Lydia were the only ones left standing at the end of the apocalypse, Stiles would probably be okay. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about other people at all. It was more that those three people were his first priority. Everything else was second. Rules, laws, codes, honor, morals, anything could be compromised if it meant those three were okay. 

Jackson had just dumped Lydia. Dumped her. Jackson had dumped her. She had been dumped. By Jackson.  
Lydia Martin, Queen of Beacon Hills High School, scoffed at him. “I wonder how many minutes it will take me to get over that one?” He left, blowing her a sarcastic kiss as he went. Lydia stood there uncertainly after he was gone. She looked around. No one was paying any attention. Allison was off doing who-knew-what who-knew-where. So she stalked away, keeping her face as cool and stoic as possible. The rest of the day passed in a state of intense focus on schoolwork. Lydia took enough notes to cover six pages in two classes. When the final bell rang, she walked to her locker and then out to her car, ignoring anyone who tried to speak to her. She wasn’t sure how she managed to drive home without crashing, but she arrived in one piece.  
Her mother was out, so Lydia all but ran up to her room and shut the door. She dropped her bag and collapsed onto her bed. Then she got back up, changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, washed off her make-up, and flopped back down again. Tears had started streaming down her face at some point, so she stood back up again and gathered tissues, chocolate, and a book on multivariable calculus. Then she lay back down on her bed and finally just cried. She knew what people had thought of her relationship with Jackson. They thought it was superficial. Allison had even thought (though, bless her, she had tried to conceal the thought) that it was unhealthy. But it had been more than that, more than anyone else would understand, and just because the emotional stuff didn’t happen in public didn’t mean it didn’t happen at all.

Stiles hated Jackson Whittemore. He had kind of always hated him. The guy was a total ass, and he had bullied Stiles and Scott mercilessly for years. But they had been able to deal with that because they had each other and who cared what Jackson thought anyway? But now Jackson had done the unforgiveable. He had deliberately, remorselessly hurt Lydia Martin. Lydia, who had loved Jackson for whatever reason, was hurting because of Jackson’s stupid, stupid desire to be an even more powerful, even more douchey douchebag. Stiles really fucking hated Jackson Whittemore.

Lydia could not understand why Allison was making her do this. Of all people, she had to go to the formal with Stiles. Lydia didn’t have anything in particular against the boy, but she didn’t like him either. This was only going to get his hopes up, and while Lydia may have acted like she had no heart, she wasn’t that cruel. So she made it as clear as possible that she did not approve of this arrangement and hoped Stiles would take the hint. He didn’t seem to, and he followed her around the mall like a lost puppy. She did her best to ignore him. He was annoying, and it was for his own good.

Stiles was so, so grateful to Allison. He knew Lydia didn’t want this, he knew she was trying to send him the message to not get his hopes up, but he was still grateful. Not only would it maybe give Lydia the chance to know him and, who knows, maybe like him, but it would also give him the chance to protect her. He knew Peter was out there, and he knew that there was nobody else who would have the time or inclination to think of protecting Lydia.

Lydia was not happy at all. Not only had Jackson given her the brush off, but Allison had also completely ignored her. Stiles had been nice enough, she supposed. Better than she expected anyway, but now she and Stiles were sitting at a table, and she was bored, and he was fidgeting. “You wanna dance?” he asked suddenly. She grimaced. She had been afraid of that.  
“Pass.”  
He stood up, and suddenly he was filled with a nervous, almost angry energy. “You know what, let me try that again. Lydia, get off your cute little ass and dance with me now.”  
Rude. “Interesting tactic. I’ll stick with no.”  
“Lydia, get up!” he said exasperatedly. “Okay, you’re gonna dance with me. I don’t care that you made out with my best friend for some weird…power thing, I don’t…”  
So he knew about that. Huh.  
“Lydia, I’ve had a crush on you since the third grade, and I know that somewhere inside that cold, lifeless exterior, there’s an actual human soul.”  
She hadn’t known he had liked her for that long. And she certainly hadn’t known that he thought about her that deeply.  
“And I’m also pretty sure that I’m the only one who knows how smart you really are, uh-huh. And that once you’re done pretending to be a nitwit, you’ll eventually go off and write some insane mathematical theorem that wins you the Nobel Prize.” He stopped, waiting for her to respond.  
She looked away. He knew she was smart. He even seemed to like that she was smart. It wasn’t a deep, complex love or even knowledge of her, but it was something. It was more than she had ever expected, certainly. But he was still wrong about one thing.  
“A Field’s Medal,” she said. He stared.  
“What?” She stood up.  
“Nobel doesn’t have a prize for mathematics. A Field’s Medal’s the one I’ll be winning.” And she led him onto the dance floor.

Stiles was content with Lydia dancing in his arms. It was honestly the best he’d felt in a month or so. Then she pulled away. She needed to go and find Jackson.  
“I get it.” He did. She wasn’t over Jackson yet. She and Jackson were linked, and she needed to find him. He followed her off the dance floor and then watched her walk away. It had been nice, but she still loved Jackass Whittemore, and there was nothing he could do or say that would change that. He called Jackson a few times, trying to reach him. Finally, he found him walking back into the dance looking shaken.  
Stiles really fucking hated Jackson Whittemore.

Lydia crossed her arms as she walked out onto the lacrosse field. She didn’t know why Jackson would be out here, but he hadn’t been anywhere else she had looked, so why not? The lights went on, echoing thuds of brightness. She turned and saw a figure walking towards her. “Jackson, is that you?” Then the figure came closer and it was clearly not Jackson. She heard running footsteps behind her, and she turned. Stiles was racing towards her.  
“LYDIA! RUN!”  
Lydia didn’t understand. She turned back, and the man was right there. He opened his mouth and there were fangs. He lunged. She fell. Black.

Stiles skidded to a halt next to Lydia as Peter crouched over her. He failed. He was supposed to protect her. He failed. He failed. He failed. “Don’t kill her. Please.”  
Peter stopped growling and seemed to consider it for a moment. “Of course not. Just tell me how to find Derek.”  
And dammit, Stiles’ connections to people were going to be used against him, and he was not going to let this monster kill Lydia or anyone, and if there was one thing he could do it was lie. So he tried to deny it, but Peter – Peter of all people – knew that he was the clever one and could see through Stiles’ lies in an instant. So Stiles told him, because Derek’s life was nothing to him next to Lydia’s. Because whoever Peter was going to kill, if it didn’t include Lydia, Scott, or his father, he could live with it. Because Lydia was in immediate danger and those people were not. Because he couldn’t watch someone die again. He told him how to find Derek.  
Then Peter told him to get up, to go with him, to leave Lydia on the field to bleed out and die, and Stiles was not going to do that, not ever. Peter said he didn’t have a choice, well screw him. “Just kill me, look, I don’t care anymore.” It barely fazed him that it rang true, that he didn’t care if he lived or died as long as Lydia got to safety.  
The small part of him that was not in complete panic mode was offended at Jackson being called his friend, but he pulled out his phone and called him anyway. Because someone had to save Lydia, even if it couldn’t be him. And if it had to be Jackson fucking Whittemore, so be it.


End file.
